Despite many advances, tumor-associated diseases such as cancer remain one of the leading causes of death and morbidity in developed nations. Although many of the molecular mechanisms of tumorigenesis have now been revealed, standard treatment of most aggressive tumors continues to be surgical resection, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. While increasingly successful, each of these treatments still causes numerous undesired side effects. For example, surgery results in pain, traumatic injury to healthy tissue, and scarring. Radiotherapy and chemotherapy cause nausea, immune suppression, gastric ulceration, and secondary tumorigenesis.
Over the last several years much progress has been made using biologic agents such as Abs to treat cancerous tumors. Abs can directly target specific types of tumor cells to harness a patient's immune response to kill the tumor. Alternatively, they can target cell growth factors to interfere with the growth of tumor cells. As with conventional chemotherapeutic agents, not all anti-tumor Abs are useful for treating all types of neoplasms, and many initially effective antibodies later lose potency. Thus new anti-tumor Abs are needed.